


The Deed of His Hand

by DreamerInSilico



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: (or really more like overtones), Canon Compliant, Dom Will Graham, Dom/sub Undertones, Episode: s02e10 Naka-Choko, First Kiss, Knifeplay, M/M, Sub Hannibal Lecter, a shockingly small amount of blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:01:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26591074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamerInSilico/pseuds/DreamerInSilico
Summary: Will isn't used to getting what he wants, or even wanting much at all.  Hannibal makes it altogether too easy to do both, sometimes.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 10
Kudos: 130
Collections: Sub Hannibal Week 2020





	The Deed of His Hand

**Author's Note:**

> _"....Empty your heart of its mortal dream.  
>  The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,  
> Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,  
> Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are agleam,  
> Our arms are waving, our lips are apart;  
> And if any gaze on our rushing band,  
> We come between him and the deed of his hand,  
> We come between him and the hope of his heart."_
> 
> \- from "The Hosting of the Sidhe," by William Butler Yeats

“I provide the ingredients… you tell me what we should do with them.”

Hannibal’s kitchen is warm and bright, already smelling of herbs, while the windows are dark, as is the rest of the house, from what Will can see. They’re adrift in a boat on the sea together, two monsters apart from the world. (The meat may not be Freddie Lounds, but it certainly isn’t pork, either.)

The moment when Hannibal passes him a knife, handle first, seems as if it should be a pregnant pause, but it isn’t. It’s easy, almost casual, even though Will can see the long, pink line of the scar on the inside of Hannibal’s forearm as he hands over the implement. He knows Hannibal notices him looking, and he feels the smile more than sees it. 

He feels that smile all through dinner, whether Hannibal is speaking, chewing, or just looking at him. It’s practically unbearable, even though he wants more of it. “You can’t reduce me to a set of influences,” he cautions, but Hannibal’s already acknowledged that, hasn’t he?

 _What hatches follows its own nature, and is beyond me_. 

Except Will doesn’t want to be _beyond_ him. He doesn’t want to be some rare specimen of butterfly to be watched from the other side of a pane of glass, beautiful but untouched.

He tells himself that this is why he takes pains to be the one carefully washing and drying the knife, when they are doing the dishes some time later. 

“What are you thinking, Will?” Hannibal asks quietly, when Will has been staring at the clean blade for several seconds. 

It seems like a ridiculous question, in light of their history, and the things Will’s freely admitted to Hannibal already, so Will doesn’t answer. (Especially since the real answer is, at the moment, that he’s thinking he wishes he’d actually killed Freddie, so as to fully deserve the way Hannibal’s looking at him right now.)

Hannibal goes utterly still when Will reaches out with his empty hand to grasp Hannibal’s wrist (re-sleeved and jacketed for dinner, but bare now once again for the cleanup), but he doesn’t protest. Will drags the pad of his thumb deliberately along the raised skin of the scar, and when he feels Hannibal’s pulse speed beneath his fingertips, his own rises in answer. He raises his eyes to Hannibal’s, and sees too much there.

Slowly, deliberately, he lifts the knife, and Hannibal still doesn’t move, not even when Will sets the edge of it to scrape lightly at an angle against the muscled line of his forearm. A bit of the blade near the tip actually shears off a whisper of hair, and Will finds himself smiling. His own amusement tastes as dry and heady in his mouth as the wine they’d had with dinner. 

“You’d barely feel it going in, you keep these so sharp.”

Hannibal raises an eyebrow, but his laugh lines deepen a moment later. He’s amused, too. “A kindness I confess I would not have expected from you.”

“Nor should you,” Will agrees easily. “I want you to feel everything I do to you.” 

The kitchen air is already warm, but even so, there’s a new heat that seems to spring up in the scant space between them, ozone-heavy and crackling. “You have my complete attention.” 

“Do I?” Will drags the tip of the knife higher along Hannibal’s arm, barely tickling the inside of his elbow before skimming over the rolled cuff of his aubergine sleeve, then higher still, up across the charcoal shoulder of his waistcoat, and from there to trace the impeccable lines of his tie. “How long, I wonder?” Will hears himself nearly whisper, and wants to bite back the words as soon as they’re released. It’s far too close to an admission. 

“As long as you want it.” It feels like an accusation, even though it certainly doesn’t sound like one. It is quiet, sincere, almost emphatic, and it is a lie. He wonders idly if Hannibal even knows that, and he tries not to look too hard at _how_ , exactly, it is a lie. 

Will steps closer, hemming Hannibal in against the kitchen counter as the knife finally finds its way to skin again, just over his shirt collar. He could slide it into the carotid artery in an instant, if he wanted, and for a moment he _does_ want, but much like the last time he held Hannibal’s life in his hands, he wants so many other things, too. 

He wants the large, warm hand that rises slowly to cup the left side of his face, wants it enough that he nearly closes his eyes. Instead, he carefully scrapes the knife across the planes of Hannibal’s face with the hazy thought that no mortal sculptor would think to pair that mouth with those cheekbones, and Hannibal’s eyes narrow like a cat being stroked to its liking, rather than a man under threat of violence. His thumb sweeps along Will’s own cheek, then up to the ridge of his brow, and Will starts to want too much, so he turns his face into that hand and drags his tongue against the scar that is just in reach, and that, _that_ has the effect he only belatedly realizes he’s been seeking this whole time - Hannibal sucks in a sharp breath, and makes an involuntary twitch that, while tiny, is enough to barely nick the skin of his jaw against the blade still hovering there. 

“Careful,” Will warns against the skin of his wrist, but he’s already moving the knife away. 

_Careful_ , he warns himself, but there’s no chance of heeding it, because there is simply nothing he can do but gently catch the tiny trickle of blood with his finger, and then, well. Hannibal’s pupils are blown wide and deep, and they only go wider when Will puts his finger to his mouth and sucks the blood from it. 

Perhaps Hannibal can taste ephemera like the ginger and garlic from their meal in such things; to Will, it just tastes like copper and iron, as blood always does. But it makes him _want_ all the more, and he’s not sure who moves first to initiate the kiss that follows, but he does know that he wants that, too. 

**Author's Note:**

> (They definitely end up in Hannibal's bed after this, in case there was any doubt. )
> 
> If you enjoyed this fic, please consider giving it a [reblog on Tumblr](https://questionablygourmet.tumblr.com/post/629925183954862080/the-deed-of-his-hand) or a [retweet](https://twitter.com/DFannibals/status/1308241975821438977)!


End file.
